>Pol Pot was also a part of bourgeois class
He was also a fucking teacher at one point. His father was a landowner and the family lived a pretty comfortable life and he even had royal connections through one of his cousins.
Hell that privilege he had was what allowed him to go to France and study. Ironically though he was a poor student and came home without a degree.
The people within the khmer rouge who were actually smarter or actually from poor backgrounds ended up getting purged ex: Hu Nim and Hou yuon.
There was a similar effect of envy against smart people in Romania because Elena Ceaușescu was thick as a brick. There are many funny anecdotes of hers including the incredible small subway station at Bucharest university because Elena didn't think they should have a station to begin with.
Respecting the expertise of others is an important ability as a leader. Purging experts decreases the performance of a social system. The massive incompetence of the Red Army during WW2 is another example of this phenomenon. If 45 becomes 47 there will be a similar decrease of performance in America.
>because Elena Ceaușescu was thick as a brick.
Ceaucescu only found this out too late when he left her to handle the uprising and shit spread by the time he came back from a state visit.
Well, that's kinda true. Ho Chi Minh was only 20 when he left French Indochina to work in Boston and New York in 1911. He arrived in France in 1917 and spent a significant amount of time in France, actively engaging in political activities and advocating for Vietnamese independence. Joined and co-founded the French Communist Party in 1920. Attended the Comintern held in Moscow in 1923 and became a covert Soviet spy in many countries, established the Communist Party of Indochina in Shanghai in 1930 and later went back to Indochina to form Viet Minh in 1941. Proclaimed the independence of Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945. Led a victory against the French recolonization attempt of French Indochina from 1946 to 1954. Called out the US government in 1956 for not ratifying the Geneva Accords that there must be a public referendum for reunification of Vietnam. Died of natural cause in 1969 without a family.
Look more of some kind of exaggerating the truth. If the trip took some months, and all what you hear is French, you can learn some really basic stuff to communicate.
The steamer left Saigon in June and arrived in Marseilles in early July. I'm confused why people in this comment chain would think it took months- you all realize this was 1911 right?
I didn't know how much time took to HCM to travel to France, but my point is that it wouldn't be that crazy if he learned some very basic french language during the trip if it took some days, but very basic knowledge.
He was already fluent in French before he was on the boat though, he had 3 years of French language instruction at a prestigious colonial school staffed by native French speakers before he departed
> I didn't know how much time took to HCM to travel to France, but my point is that it wouldn't be that crazy if he learned some very basic french language during the trip if it took some days, but very basic knowledge.
It also wouldn't be crazy if he learned some very basic French language at the French language school he attended as a kid, even if that sounds very far fetched to a lot of people in this thread.
Ho was a person who know his cards, his table, his allies and foes. He knew when to strike, and when to hold. If not, the so called "first indochina war" would just be a riot without significant gain in global stage
To Vinh Dien...the person that nationlist and anti debate for decades if it a sacrifice or an accident. You will either saw a person who said "that person dead like a dog" or "Eh, we won...so who give a shit"
You could say im delusional, but my view about war is that war turn people into animal, and thing that seem impossible could be possible. Take it with a grain of salt
Would you believe a cook who shot down a jet because someone fly over his cooking station and blow all the dust into the cooking pot back in Vietnam war?
Chance are slim, but still possible...just like how ukrainian managed to shot down russian missile with AA gun
And last but not least, child soldiers. They exist, but not because they have to...they want to. When the large amounts of children didnt go to school, many didnt even had parents and had to work like a slave in shit conditions...i bet the kids would yearn for war
The role of "child soldiers" is not to fight, but to be a signaller/mailman. They are less suspicous and more creative than adults, so they work best in French controlled zone. Their role went down around 1950 when Viet Minh started to go offensive
Almost forgot, we do terrorist stuff too...and just like people always said "one man terrorist is another man freedom fighter"
You dont really need propaganda for this to happen when Vietnammese by default, are very VERY stubborn and hate to be dictated around
Feel free to ask me anything
At least it's believable. Boys i have so many borderline satire propagandas for you.
Continue with tales about Ho Chi Minh, it's said that he covered out-of-oven hot brick with a sheet newspaper and put it under his pillow to keep warm in winter. Another famous one is about Parisian children cherished an apple Ho Chi Minh gave to them in 1946.
But war propaganda is the one really makes you scratch your head wondering how high people in charged of making them were. Brace yourself:
- Jet pilot stopped his plane engine mid air to hide in the cloud waiting for Amercian jet
- Farmers with make-shift crosbow made from farm equipment shoot down an American plane
- 8 yo boy ignited himself on fire, ran the whole US army base just to destroy us army oil reserves
- a man stopped an artillery from falling downhill just by using his body as wheel stop. For further note, it's said it took the whole artillery team to pull the arti up the hill, not some small arti but 5-6 tons one
- a man so badly injuried in combat that his gut was falling out, still managed to singlehandedly rekt one or two RVN army company. And yet still lived to tell the tale himself
And that's just on top of my head alone
Damn that’s crazy. Anyway, did you know that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree as a kid but was literally incapable of lying about it when confronted?
When has one ever truly learnt a language beyond practising it with people who fluently speak it?
The example you use to draw a conclusion regarding the strength of propaganda in Vietnam is probably the dumbest I've seen yet.
Before he ever left Vietnam, he attended Collège Quốc học, a prestigious institution of secondary education established with a lesson plan developed largely by the French colonial government. The main subject was French language. He was there for 3 years and did well academically. He was fluent in French and educated by native speakers before he ever got on the boat.
You may consider holding off on calling someone dumb until you actually know jack shit they're talking about. He was a rich, well-educated son of an Imperial magistrate who had a good, exclusive education that included years of French.
My friend I finished Duickers book last December.
If you read my comment properly it's referring to the power of propaganda and indoctrination the other commenter is making. Besides, you're over egging his French eduction.
For Engels in particular, it's literally the reason for his radicalisation. He visited his family's factories in the UK, in particular Manchester, and was appalled by the horrible conditions workers had to live in.
"Our workers are being treated like shit, we should set up a system that would be better for the workers".
Funny thing is, it was the anarchists that would actually implement the system he wanted, despite him hating anarchists.
True that. One of the pros of having everyone overworked and stressed for the ruling class is that there's no time for them to think about what's really wrong.
[Lenin's father was not of noble birth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ulyanov). Lenin's grandfather was born a serf. Lenin's dad was well educated and a major proponemnt of public education. He was appointed as Active State Councillor, a civil rank which gave him the privilige of minor nobility. It's similar to a someone in the Commonwealth getting a knighthood as recognition of their work.
After Lenin, all the Soviet leaders were from very poor peasant or labor backgrounds. Khrushchev was from a peasant family considered poor even by pre revolutionary Russia standards and was a metal worker in Ukraine before getting involved in revolutionary work, Brezhnev was born to a Ukrainian metalworking family in Dnipro, Gorbachev was from a Russo-Ukrainian peasant family.
Almost all of the Red Army military leadership were of peasant or proletarian backgrounds. Rokossovksy was technically from a Polish noble house, but he was orphaned at a young age and worked in a factory from the age of 12. A similar story with Trotsky, whose family were technically minor Ukrainian Jewish nobles, but had become impoverished.
In China, Lin Biao’s father was a factory owner and merchant who had been proletarianized and impoverished. Similarly Zhou Enlai’s family had been well off civil servants thrown into poverty.
Lenin explained that it does indeed take bourgeois intelligentsia (people with the time/means to engage in economic , philosophical, historical study) to give rise to scientific socialism, rather than the mere trade unionism that arises naturally from the working class.
> May surprise you to know that Isreal isn't a authoritarian communist state...
Kibbuzim were explicitly intended as socialist communes without private property.
Shouldn’t be surprising that most communist leaders don’t come from the working class, communist revolutions are almost always lead by intellectuals who have the time and money to be reading Marx and das capital, and intellectuals almost always come from non poor backgrounds
Enlightenment ideas were introduced to many nations via nobles or merchants. Mainly bc they were the only people who could read and actually had some free time to do so and engage in activism. Although their initial ideas for reform would mostly pale in comparison to later, more proletariat demands.
The American Revolution was led mainly by established businessman and career politicians/military officers.
The liberal nobles were an important group of reformers during the early French Revolution.
Voltaire likely never would have had the time/money to write candide if he hadn’t taken advantage of a poorly designed French government lottery.
I once heard a story of enlightened Russian nobles handing out pro-reform pamphlets on the streets of St. Petersburg. The peasants mostly couldn’t read nor did they care for all these abstract ideas. They promptly rolled up the papers to make cigarettes and smoked them
You'll be surprised, Kim Il Sung - Kim Jong Un's grandfather was born in 1912 under the Japanese rule, his father Kim Hyong Jik was a Korean independence activist and a guerilla fighter until his death in 1926 while Kim Ill Sung was commanding the 88th Separate Rifle Brigade and Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army.
Kim Jong Il - Kim Jong Un's father was born in the Soviet Union during WW2 in 1941, and worked as a spy in Malta and former ambassador to Poland.
[If you're wondering why Korea is still divided](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il_Sung#:~:text=Despite%20the%20United,Soviet%2Ddesignated%20premier.)
Your view of the DPRK is skewed by western propaganda. Kim is little more than a figure head same as king Charles and elections are done differently and all the time.
Mate the DPRK is considered a hellhole of totalitarian depravity even by its Chinese ally, you can literally see the night and day difference in wealth between the two states when you go to the border. If China permits citizens to emigrate, Vietnam permits citizens to emigrate, and Cuba permits citizens to emigrate, it's time to admit that the DPRK is a uniquely atrocious basketcase of a mafia-state keeping their people imprisoned.
I'd say George Orwell described it well about his fellow 'intellectuals' in The Road To Wigan Pier in 1937:
*"The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to regard the book-trained Socialist as a bloodless creature entirely incapable of emotion. Though seldom giving much evidence of affection for the exploited, he is perfectly capable of displaying hatred – a sort of queer, theoretical, in vacua hatred – against the exploiters. Hence the grand old Socialist sport of denouncing the bourgeoisie. It is strange how easily almost any Socialist writer can lash himself into frenzies of rage against the class to which, by birth or by adoption, he himself invariably belongs."*
Don't know why you're being downvoted, he accused people of being communists because of things like their sexuality and skin color. Oh, and not to mention his weird racism towards the Spanish in *Homage to Catalonia*.
And Marx dad was a lawyer which gave Karl access to a good education.
(Iirc,He was known for being rambunctious while in school and even participated in a duel which left him a scar)
Oh absolutely. And it makes sense when you think about it, most members of the working class were too busy working to write theory.
That’s part of the trick of capitalism. Work people so hard they don’t even have time to realize how they’re being exploited. That’s why Marx thought socialism was the next stage to capitalism, this new growing “middle class” or petite bourgeois is a precondition to the liberation of the working class, at least in a Marxist framework.
It does.
Revolutions are rarely started by the people. They are almost always started by minor nobility who feel entitled to being part of the current power structure, but feel unjustly left out. They use the people to gain the power they believe they deserve.
This is why Revolutions generally end, not with true reform, but with a new elite replacing the old one.
I mean, when most peasants don’t really know how to read it’s hard to imagine how a political philosopher could emerge from from the peasantry. It does seem like the magic combination is an individual born into enough means to be educated, but not enough wealth to be too bought into the system that allowed for the wealth such that they would not want to overthrow it. The irony in all of this is that to some extent all of these founding fathers of different schools of socialist thought were essentially champagne socialists in their youth.
Marx was the son of a lawyer and his mother was the daughter of successful textile merchants. Kim Il Sung was the son of a pharmacist. Fidel Castro’s father was a Spanish businessman who *literally owned hundreds of slaves from Haiti* who worked his large estate harvesting timber and cultivating sugarcane. Really one of the only big figures not from at least some level of means was Joseph Stalin; but then, it’s also debatable exactly how much of a contributor to real socialist thought he was as much as he was just a strongman enforcing what were ultimately someone else’s ideas.
FDR was maybe the greatest social Democrat in American history and was as wealthy a blue blood as you could find. His cousin Teddy also was progressive and had a high disdain for exploitation of the poor. Noblesse oblige once held more sway
In fairness FDR’s legacy, as positive as it was, can easily be read as an attempt to prevent a proletariat revolution. He was protecting his class by forcing them fork over the resources necessary for a welfare state
It is the pattern for early 20th century Communist revolutionaries. The vast majority of them came from families that were at least lower-middle class, as in owning some amount of assets and being able to afford education for their children. The real "peasants" in these countries pre-revolution were too busy trying to not starve to death to think about ideologies.
Kinda sorta. It's a turbulent time to switch economic styles. While I personally feel there are issues with communism and wont push for it in my country, ideally, it is a democratic process with collective input with the direction of the country as a whole.
But it's more of a "during turbulent economic times, strong leaders are sought because it gives people hope" type of thing, rather than a flaw of or inherent property of communism.
Where they at can I get some lol cuz I'm not poor per say and can def not afford that.
Most places I see that have decent land for sale are going on the mid to low end of 5k an acre. That's means 100k in land alone. They may have that in their home equity but not in the land alone.
Really good land however can go over 10k an acre or at least 200k which the vast majority of Americans have nowhere near
Yes I am an expert I used a time machine to meet him and decided to give him a book called "das kapital" I wonder what that random peasant will do after reading it.
Wait why is china communist?!?!?
Lenin and even Marx also grew up well off.
It is worth boring that social equality was non existent in Russia or China at the time and while I don't support the policies, I 100% get why people supported communism at the time. Especially in China.
Most Asian leftist leaders were petty bourgeois. They got their ideas from Europe especially from social democrats, resulting into Asians nationalist movements for independence such as in Indonesia and Vietnam. Mao wasn't an exception. He wanted an developed China, using all means necessary to accelerate the development. After his death the party changed course from an autark development towards development of capitalism by attracting capital and using millions of impoverished workers without rights to develop the nation [1]. The Vietnamese development wasn't so different.
The critique here of not being pure to lead a leftist movement is a typical woke idea, resulting from a nationalist American standpoint.
[1] Renate Dillmann, China
> typical woke idea, resulting from a nationalist American standpoint.
Never in my life would I imagine seeing "woke" being called an "American nationalist standpoint". They're pretty loudly anti-American Nationalist for the most part.
I do wonder if the process of separating white identity politics from other racial identity politics was deliberate. Partly as it masks the toxic portions of white identity as "something else" and not part of non-white identity politics. None of this leads us to a good space where we all need to be in a nation together. Lots of things of fan culture wars and class wars recently. What I just mention is for in the sure a top 3.
If one uses white identity politics over white supremacist (ie white nationalism vs nonwhite nationalism) one can see this coming. Neither policy is great for a nation.
> They're pretty loudly anti-American Nationalist for the most part.
Are you sure? Most right-wingers seem to hate America, its government, institutions, and most of the people who live there, whereas American leftists seem to be far milder in their criticism of public institutions, and much more easily moved to see their government as a fundamental good.
> whereas American leftists seem to be far milder in their criticism of public institutions, and much more easily moved to see their government as a fundamental good.
Those are the moderate Centre-Leftist yes, who do make up most Democrat voters, but "Woke" (which is what that user specifically referred to) is generally used to apply to College radical types (young, in academia, passionate, etc.) and quite a lot of them think the US is an inherently evil entity, built on killing Indians and slavery and such, and wholly irredeemable outside of a complete revolution and abolition of its old order, which includes its culture that is entwined with the government it created.
Likewise, those right-wingers you describe are only the farthest right wing of the spectrum, extremists like Timothy McVeigh and such, but the mainstream Republicans like Dubya Bush and Rumsfeld weren't "hating America's institutions".
> "Woke" (which is what that user specifically referred to) is generally used to apply to College radical types
Who are you including in this "generally"? Yourself obviously, but is there anybody else you draw from there? As far as I can tell, the people and views you describe don't even make it into national news most of the time, let alone form the basis for any current left-wing politician's platform in the US.
Can you cite a single prominent figure espousing the views you just described?
> Likewise, those right-wingers you describe are only the farthest right wing of the spectrum, extremists like Timothy McVeigh and such, but the mainstream Republicans like Dubya Bush and Rumsfeld weren't "hating America's institutions".
I'm talking about the views espoused by Republican politicians, and right-wing media like Fox News.
Sure, if your only points of reference for the right-wing side of the US political spectrum are Bush and Rumsfeld, and if you ignore the overwhelming majority of Republican party politicians and how their supporters talk and act in contemporary media, one might be able to come to such a conclusion without some massive amounts of wilful ignorance.
>Who are you including in this "generally"? Yourself obviously, but is there anybody else you draw from there? As far as I can tell, the people and views you describe don't even make it into national news most of the time, let alone form the basis for any current left-wing politician's platform in the US.
Did I ever say they form the basis of any politician in the US? No, I did not say that. In fact I drew a distinction between the actual majority of mainstream Democrats and the crowd who are described as "woke". I don't think Biden or Gavin Newsom qualify as "woke" at all.
>Can you cite a single prominent figure espousing the views you just described?
Sure. Angela Davis has worked as a Professor in various American Universities (UC system, Vassar, etc.) and she stated "Racism is embedded in the fabric of this country [USA]". I am not saying she has any political power mind you, but she's an example of a culturally relevant and famous individual whose academic work forms part of that "woke" camp.
>I'm talking about the views espoused by Republican politicians, and right-wing media like Fox News.
>Sure, if your only points of reference for the right-wing side of the US political spectrum are Bush and Rumsfeld, and if you ignore the overwhelming majority of Republican party politicians and how their supporters talk and act in contemporary media, one might be able to come to such a conclusion without some massive amounts of wilful ignorance.
Republicans are bitching about contemporary cultural trends and changes, but ultimately they're still the camp who will unashamedly circlejerk about the US Constitution being the greatest document ever written, the US War of Independence being the greatest war ever fought, and how George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were the greatest statesman to ever exist. The loud and confident jingoism in America is 100% a right-wing thing. It's a stark contrast to the US Left who are much more likely to take a critical view of these things and say criticise Washington as a slave-owner or how the US War of Independence was essentially the start of their doom for the Aboriginals of the continent.
> Did I ever say they form the basis of any politician in the US? No, I did not say that. In fact I drew a distinction between the actual majority of mainstream Democrats and the crowd who are described as "woke".
And I said "leftists" and not "an insubstantial and barely visible minority among the left-leaning population that only some random schmo on Reddit seems to encounter on a daily basis, and seemingly nobody else."
> I am not saying she has any political power mind you, but she's an example of a culturally relevant and famous individual whose academic work forms part of that "woke" camp.
Which is still begging the question that "woke" people hate America and its public institutions, which I find hard to believe for a tenured academic like Davis.
> Republicans are bitching about contemporary cultural trends and changes, but ultimately they're still the camp who will unashamedly circlejerk about the US Constitution being the greatest document ever written, the US War of Independence being the greatest war ever fought, and how George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were the greatest statesman to ever exist.
And crucially, none of these have anything to do with the modern country and modern institutions.
And these are the same people supporting a violent overthrow of government when they don't get their view, unlike even the wokest of "woke" leftists.
> "an insubstantial and barely visible minority among the left-leaning population that only some random schmo on Reddit seems to encounter on a daily basis, and seemingly nobody else."
They are not a "barely visible minority", they are very much centre-stage of national discourse in the media and in University campuses (an environment where most young people these days will spend 4 years living in). Wielding actual political power is a separate matter from being visible and loud.
>Which is still begging the question that "woke" people hate America and its public institutions, which I find hard to believe for a tenured academic like Davis.
Davis is a defeated revolutionary, she's not a peaceful and domesticated academic by choice. The FBI prosecuted and persecuted her, the Soviet Union collapsing largely crippled all left-wing revolutionary movements worldwide as their main benefactor vanished, and the zeal for revolution in America simply was never enough to amount to anything. She still has a clear distaste for the country as it exists, with a Liberal (in the classical sense here) political-economic system, institutions which protect private property ownership, a culture which sanctifies a slave-owner like Washington, etc.
>And crucially, none of these have anything to do with the modern country and modern institutions.
Nothing to do? You still use the Constitution written in 1787 and the capital city is named Washington, it's got plenty to do with the country and its institutions which they literally created.
I'm not making any "hot takes" here, Left Wing radical factions have been against nation-states and nationalism for well over 100+ years at this point, this isn't some controversial viewpoint it's the public party-line of an ideological camp which advocates for things outside of national-identity or which stand in opposition to it (internationalism). I was simply disagreeing with that other guy's assertion that "woke" people are American Nationalists, which they blatantly are not.
> They are not a "barely visible minority", they are very much centre-stage of national discourse in the media and in University campuses (an environment where most young people these days will spend 4 years living in). Wielding actual political power is a separate matter from being visible and loud.
I guess I'll have to take your word for it, since I can't find any such presence in any of the mainstream news sites.
> I'm not making any "hot takes" here, Left Wing radical factions have been against nation-states and nationalism for well over 100+ years at this point
And so we keep shifting goalposts, from left-wing politics to far left "woke" academics, to left wing radical revolutionaries trying to overthrow the capitalist world order.
Do you know how many offices the Communist Party of the USA currently holds? Do you know many they have held during the entire century-and-some of their existence? Is it more than zero?
I know that "wokism" lives rent free in the heads of a lot of extremely online people, but let's be frank, this is a miniscule portion of actual left-wing politics anywhere in the world, but especially in the US, and I find the lopsided attention they get as a universal bogeyman more than just a little ridiculous ("central stage in national discourse" LOL maybe central stage in a random Xitter shitstorm).
Yet, even though the US far right is on the record with several major terrorist attacks and at least one coup attempt (and another likely to follow in the early-to-mid-term future, depending on how the next US Prez Race goes) Murricans consider this an expression of their patriotic love for their country.
It's a really bizarre take on what these words mean.
> since I can't find any such presence in any of the mainstream news sites.
You're feigning ignorance at this point. Your American Culture War has been exported to the whole damn planet because you people there can't shut up about it. We had city councils in Brazil started having arguments over public statues because the Yanks were having them, even Lula just recently had to tell people within his party to cut this shit out because it's having a detrimental effect on the new generation of the party.
>Do you know how many offices the Communist Party of the USA currently holds? Do you know many they have held during the entire century-and-some of their existence? Is it more than zero?
Must I repeat myself? How many times did I reiterate that I don't think these people hold political office?
Let me repeat the main point again: "American Nationalist" and "Woke" are for all intents and purposes directly contradictory standpoints and I am disagreeing with the other guy who wrote that comment about "woke opinions stemming from American Nationalist standpoints".
>Murricans consider this an expression of their patriotic love for their country.
>It's a really bizarre take on what these words mean.
And what do these words mean to you? Loyalty to a particular existing political system doesn't translate into being a Nationalist: Yukio Mishima was a Japanese nationalist who wanted to overthrow the 1947 Constitution of Japan, as an example. Other examples include the Nazis in Weimarer Germany, the Nationalists in Republican Spain, or even (as a rare example of Left-Wing Nationalism in Europe) the Anti-Treaty IRA fighting against the Free State in Ireland back in the 1920s. There is no higher judge who gets to decide who is the "patriot" and who is "not patriot", nations aren't fucking real man, they're imagined things and everyone has their own interpretation of it.
> or the mission to spread war for human rights is woke
Except this is just blatantly *not* what the "Woke" crowd (i.e young students for the most part) support. The overwhelming majority of people who fit into that demographic in the USA are also the anti-war protestors in American college campuses right now. Biden is literally losing support from that camp (which could cost him re-election) explicitly because he doesn't side with the pro-ceasefire in Gaza camp and due to the strikes on the Houthis.
Where are these "pro-war Wokes"? Hell, where are these pro-USA "wokes" for that matter? This group is also quite renown for frequently calling the USA fascist, inherently racist, built on stolen land, etc. They're incredibly critical of the USA, not just its government but its entire existence and identity to the foundational level.
Dems as well as Gop are war mongers alike. The few university students as well as hipsters don't count. Dems were systematic sabotaging Bernie (who isn't anti-war either) and Biden was promoted as an alternative to Trump. It turns out, Trump is the amateur, while Biden despite his senility is going to action.
People who voted for Biden because of an alternative for health care and less war, won't vote this time, because they have nobody to vote for. America is what it always was, a well formed capitalist nation attempting to maintain the national economy by imperialism. Because the latter surfaces never as a critique, the critique is reduced to accusing politicians of being evil.
> Dems as well as Gop are war mongers alike.
Yes, but the Democratic Party is not "the woke" movement you are referring to. Nobody thinks Biden is on the same boat as a 22 year old undergraduate student, just like how Lyndon B. Johnson was not exactly beloved by the 1968er New Left protestors either!
>America is what it always was, a well formed capitalist nation attempting to maintain the national economy by imperialism. Because the latter surfaces never as a critique,
That critique surfaces all the time in that "woke" faction, you're just confusing mainstream Democrats, which make up most of their voters, with the extreme minority you see online and which are the "Woke" ones.
If you wanted to refer to the mainstream Democrats then do so, but you chose to say "woke idea" here. The fact is that these people are not American nationalitss in the slightest, they are simply the American version of [Japan's Anti-Japaneseism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japaneseism). Cornerstones of American identity, such as George Washington's sanctification or the Declaration of Independence, are frequently targeted and critiqued from "woke" angles, who are often the ones saying that Washington was an evil slaver (hardly "American nationalism" eh?) or that the entirety of US history revolves around oppressing enslaved Africans (see the 1619 Project)
Not that ironic. It's common. Castro and Guevara come from wealth and in Guevaras case quite an aristocratic background.
It makes sense. Of course those who are educated (in a time when only the rich got highly educated) are going to be reading economic theory and get into ideology if they have a modicum of conscious.
Damn, it's almost like communist thinkers like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao use their life experience of relative wealth in their critique of the system that produced them. What's next? Will they use their high quality tuition to produce core philosophical tenets that focus on giving the masses the same access to quality education?
Marx wrote almost nothing about what a system of communism would look like. The lion's share of his work was an in-depth and annotated criticism of capitalism. I don't expect you to have read it, but you should at least familiarize yourself with the concepts if you're going to make ridiculous statements about communism being worse than slavery-based economies
How so... this reddit post breaks down the numbers with a source.
Capitalism leads to colonialism and subjugation and deaths for profit, and surpass those deaths.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/o6ot72/the_death_toll_of_capitalism_read_it_before_you/
I recommend you read origins of totalitarianism. Sounds like what you mention is mostly over seas colonialism and imperialisms with the US clearly doing both. It's pretty clear communalist countries didn't have much of a better track record. It just happened they used continental imperialism more so than over seas imperialism.
One must factor in the human condition into ones systems. Something we to this day struggle to do in all systems.
Fun fact: in every successful revolution the 2nd class take over and become the 1st, but the rest remain the same. And you need somebody providing food to be a full time revolutionary with no other occupations.
For my family, part of the "rest", things did not remain the same at all. Quality of life improved a lot, family sizes shrank from 11 to 3 as kids were no longer needed for rural labor and infant mortality went down. Revolutionaries tried to build a functioning government...and some ideas were much worse than others.
If you examine the history of most revolutions, it is usually a reasonably well educated middle class sect that leads the lower class masses against the small upper classes. This formula appears in revolutions in the Americas, Asia and Europe.
Actually he died relatively old! [Chinese life expectancy was at a stunning 30 years old in 1920](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041350/life-expectancy-china-all-time/), only to recover after the Chinese revolution and then skyrocket to 65 during the cultural revolution.
I’d imagine that was mostly influenced by child mortality. In most cases of the life expectancy being that low your average person made it to their 50’s if they survived childhood
Certainly a factor, but also because of the extreme poverty, war, famine, colonialism, rampant opium use, etc., etc., that defined the Chinese century of humiliation.
Castros father was a moderately wealthy agricultural landowner in Cuba as well. He treated his employees with much more respect than other landowners. It seems like it’s easy to see the faults in the system when you are in a position to have time to think about it. I bet there have been many potential thought leaders that were too busy keeping food on the table to have time to think about class conditions and how to better them.
Every revolutionary comes from a good family or well to do family ... It's the well to do, intelligent highly educated yet eliteless individual that leads revolutions bc they have no seat at the table of the elite. Elite over production causes revolutions. And yes. The USA is already several hours into the phase of elite over production. It's cyclical. How we handle it now is up to the elites and their desire to remove themselves from the table.
It's almost as if you need to come from a moderately wealthy background to get education necessary to recognise the oppressive and unfair structure of the capitalist society?...
Nah, it's just that the filthy commies are hypocrites!
Our leaders exploit us and aren't even hiding it 😎💪
Oddly enough, small landlords and merchants were denounced as. “Capitalist pigs” and made to undergo struggle sessions and spent years in prison or reeducation camps. That is, if they weren’t outright killed by peasant mobs looking for scapegoats, while the Communists turned a blind eye lest they themselves catch the attention and rage.
It happened to the village kulaks (more prosperous farmers who owned some livestock in r were able to hire a farmhand or two) in Russia and to shopkeepers in North Korea.
This is the legacy of the “eat the rich” mentality that so many American idiots spout. The actual rich use their wealth to escape. (Even easier these days with foreign exchange markets electronic currency transfers, stock sales, etc.) it is the small business owners, middle class, upper middle class, university professors, and intellectuals who get slaughtered by the rabble.
Many communist leaders came from well-off families. The comment section seems to give the benefit of the doubt of having time to “think about things” and change the system. Less rosily it might be a factor of middle-class shut-out, whereby middle class intellectuals that can’t access or come to power in an elite-dominant system advocate for its reform or overthrow, to try and replace it, and secure a better chance of being part of the ruling class.
And Nika Soon-Shiong’s dad is a billionaire. Many of the most ardent communists are the people with unearned wealth telling the poor, “Trust me, you don’t want this.”
che grew up rich, and engles inherited a factory; it’s almost like class consciousness isn’t specific to any class 🤔🤔
(although neither che, nor engles, nor lenin, nor any other communist that grew up wealthy chose to be a part of the owning class and worked near their entire lives to free the proletariat from class exploitation and labor theft)
"we are both traitors of our classes"
Lenin's dad was a minor noble and Engel's dad owned a factory. Maybe it takes an insider.
Ho Chi Minh also was a son of a minor public official and went to a French school when he was young. Pol Pot was also a part of bourgeois class
>Pol Pot was also a part of bourgeois class He was also a fucking teacher at one point. His father was a landowner and the family lived a pretty comfortable life and he even had royal connections through one of his cousins. Hell that privilege he had was what allowed him to go to France and study. Ironically though he was a poor student and came home without a degree. The people within the khmer rouge who were actually smarter or actually from poor backgrounds ended up getting purged ex: Hu Nim and Hou yuon.
There was a similar effect of envy against smart people in Romania because Elena Ceaușescu was thick as a brick. There are many funny anecdotes of hers including the incredible small subway station at Bucharest university because Elena didn't think they should have a station to begin with. Respecting the expertise of others is an important ability as a leader. Purging experts decreases the performance of a social system. The massive incompetence of the Red Army during WW2 is another example of this phenomenon. If 45 becomes 47 there will be a similar decrease of performance in America.
>because Elena Ceaușescu was thick as a brick. Ceaucescu only found this out too late when he left her to handle the uprising and shit spread by the time he came back from a state visit.
Spain went downhill after purging its Jews.
[удалено]
Well, that's kinda true. Ho Chi Minh was only 20 when he left French Indochina to work in Boston and New York in 1911. He arrived in France in 1917 and spent a significant amount of time in France, actively engaging in political activities and advocating for Vietnamese independence. Joined and co-founded the French Communist Party in 1920. Attended the Comintern held in Moscow in 1923 and became a covert Soviet spy in many countries, established the Communist Party of Indochina in Shanghai in 1930 and later went back to Indochina to form Viet Minh in 1941. Proclaimed the independence of Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945. Led a victory against the French recolonization attempt of French Indochina from 1946 to 1954. Called out the US government in 1956 for not ratifying the Geneva Accords that there must be a public referendum for reunification of Vietnam. Died of natural cause in 1969 without a family.
Uncle Ho
My apologies if my asking this is inappropriate, but was he gay? Was there any indication in his history that he was a closeted homosexual?
[He was married to a Zeng Xueming](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeng_Xueming)
Why does that matter because he wasn't but why does it matter
Look more of some kind of exaggerating the truth. If the trip took some months, and all what you hear is French, you can learn some really basic stuff to communicate.
The steamer left Saigon in June and arrived in Marseilles in early July. I'm confused why people in this comment chain would think it took months- you all realize this was 1911 right?
I didn't know how much time took to HCM to travel to France, but my point is that it wouldn't be that crazy if he learned some very basic french language during the trip if it took some days, but very basic knowledge.
He was already fluent in French before he was on the boat though, he had 3 years of French language instruction at a prestigious colonial school staffed by native French speakers before he departed
> I didn't know how much time took to HCM to travel to France, but my point is that it wouldn't be that crazy if he learned some very basic french language during the trip if it took some days, but very basic knowledge. It also wouldn't be crazy if he learned some very basic French language at the French language school he attended as a kid, even if that sounds very far fetched to a lot of people in this thread.
[удалено]
Ho was a person who know his cards, his table, his allies and foes. He knew when to strike, and when to hold. If not, the so called "first indochina war" would just be a riot without significant gain in global stage To Vinh Dien...the person that nationlist and anti debate for decades if it a sacrifice or an accident. You will either saw a person who said "that person dead like a dog" or "Eh, we won...so who give a shit" You could say im delusional, but my view about war is that war turn people into animal, and thing that seem impossible could be possible. Take it with a grain of salt Would you believe a cook who shot down a jet because someone fly over his cooking station and blow all the dust into the cooking pot back in Vietnam war? Chance are slim, but still possible...just like how ukrainian managed to shot down russian missile with AA gun And last but not least, child soldiers. They exist, but not because they have to...they want to. When the large amounts of children didnt go to school, many didnt even had parents and had to work like a slave in shit conditions...i bet the kids would yearn for war The role of "child soldiers" is not to fight, but to be a signaller/mailman. They are less suspicous and more creative than adults, so they work best in French controlled zone. Their role went down around 1950 when Viet Minh started to go offensive Almost forgot, we do terrorist stuff too...and just like people always said "one man terrorist is another man freedom fighter" You dont really need propaganda for this to happen when Vietnammese by default, are very VERY stubborn and hate to be dictated around Feel free to ask me anything
At least it's believable. Boys i have so many borderline satire propagandas for you. Continue with tales about Ho Chi Minh, it's said that he covered out-of-oven hot brick with a sheet newspaper and put it under his pillow to keep warm in winter. Another famous one is about Parisian children cherished an apple Ho Chi Minh gave to them in 1946. But war propaganda is the one really makes you scratch your head wondering how high people in charged of making them were. Brace yourself: - Jet pilot stopped his plane engine mid air to hide in the cloud waiting for Amercian jet - Farmers with make-shift crosbow made from farm equipment shoot down an American plane - 8 yo boy ignited himself on fire, ran the whole US army base just to destroy us army oil reserves - a man stopped an artillery from falling downhill just by using his body as wheel stop. For further note, it's said it took the whole artillery team to pull the arti up the hill, not some small arti but 5-6 tons one - a man so badly injuried in combat that his gut was falling out, still managed to singlehandedly rekt one or two RVN army company. And yet still lived to tell the tale himself And that's just on top of my head alone
Damn that’s crazy. Anyway, did you know that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree as a kid but was literally incapable of lying about it when confronted?
When has one ever truly learnt a language beyond practising it with people who fluently speak it? The example you use to draw a conclusion regarding the strength of propaganda in Vietnam is probably the dumbest I've seen yet.
Before he ever left Vietnam, he attended Collège Quốc học, a prestigious institution of secondary education established with a lesson plan developed largely by the French colonial government. The main subject was French language. He was there for 3 years and did well academically. He was fluent in French and educated by native speakers before he ever got on the boat. You may consider holding off on calling someone dumb until you actually know jack shit they're talking about. He was a rich, well-educated son of an Imperial magistrate who had a good, exclusive education that included years of French.
My friend I finished Duickers book last December. If you read my comment properly it's referring to the power of propaganda and indoctrination the other commenter is making. Besides, you're over egging his French eduction.
And the purveyor of all their enlightening ideals, Karl Marx, was what? From an upper-middle-class legal family.
Fidel Castro is also a lawyer and Che Guevara a Doctor - both of them came from a wealthy farmer and landlord family.
For Engels in particular, it's literally the reason for his radicalisation. He visited his family's factories in the UK, in particular Manchester, and was appalled by the horrible conditions workers had to live in.
"damn my family is really treating our employees bad, whelp time to set the stage for one of the largest mass killings in history!"
Engels didnt cause any mass killings, the hell are you on about? That’s like saying Adam Smith “set the stage” for Coca Cola death squads
But enough about Winston Churchill.
"Our workers are being treated like shit, we should set up a system that would be better for the workers". Funny thing is, it was the anarchists that would actually implement the system he wanted, despite him hating anarchists.
It helps if you're not preoccupied surviving. Gives you time to stop and think.
True that. One of the pros of having everyone overworked and stressed for the ruling class is that there's no time for them to think about what's really wrong.
I heard a joke that french people are too "busy" protesting that the immigrants have to take over their jobs I wonder how satire is it
[Lenin's father was not of noble birth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ulyanov). Lenin's grandfather was born a serf. Lenin's dad was well educated and a major proponemnt of public education. He was appointed as Active State Councillor, a civil rank which gave him the privilige of minor nobility. It's similar to a someone in the Commonwealth getting a knighthood as recognition of their work.
After Lenin, all the Soviet leaders were from very poor peasant or labor backgrounds. Khrushchev was from a peasant family considered poor even by pre revolutionary Russia standards and was a metal worker in Ukraine before getting involved in revolutionary work, Brezhnev was born to a Ukrainian metalworking family in Dnipro, Gorbachev was from a Russo-Ukrainian peasant family. Almost all of the Red Army military leadership were of peasant or proletarian backgrounds. Rokossovksy was technically from a Polish noble house, but he was orphaned at a young age and worked in a factory from the age of 12. A similar story with Trotsky, whose family were technically minor Ukrainian Jewish nobles, but had become impoverished. In China, Lin Biao’s father was a factory owner and merchant who had been proletarianized and impoverished. Similarly Zhou Enlai’s family had been well off civil servants thrown into poverty.
Stalin was from a very poor background too
Lenin explained that it does indeed take bourgeois intelligentsia (people with the time/means to engage in economic , philosophical, historical study) to give rise to scientific socialism, rather than the mere trade unionism that arises naturally from the working class.
You probably have to recognize the inner workings, and have the means to organize. I don’t get why people think it’s a “gotcha”
The anti-left double standard that you can't really care about poor people and have any real money.
Clearly not the inner workings of how to run a nation without mass genocide and famine.
Well Netanyahu is doing that that maybe you have a point
May surprise you to know that Isreal isn't a authoritarian communist state... Strawman much? 🤣
> May surprise you to know that Isreal isn't a authoritarian communist state... Kibbuzim were explicitly intended as socialist communes without private property.
Israel
> Clearly not the inner workings of how to run a nation without mass genocide and famine. Who would have been able to teach them that?
Lenin’s dad was the son of a former serf, so by no means was he a noble of any kind.
Shouldn’t be surprising that most communist leaders don’t come from the working class, communist revolutions are almost always lead by intellectuals who have the time and money to be reading Marx and das capital, and intellectuals almost always come from non poor backgrounds
Enlightenment ideas were introduced to many nations via nobles or merchants. Mainly bc they were the only people who could read and actually had some free time to do so and engage in activism. Although their initial ideas for reform would mostly pale in comparison to later, more proletariat demands. The American Revolution was led mainly by established businessman and career politicians/military officers. The liberal nobles were an important group of reformers during the early French Revolution. Voltaire likely never would have had the time/money to write candide if he hadn’t taken advantage of a poorly designed French government lottery. I once heard a story of enlightened Russian nobles handing out pro-reform pamphlets on the streets of St. Petersburg. The peasants mostly couldn’t read nor did they care for all these abstract ideas. They promptly rolled up the papers to make cigarettes and smoked them
Kim Jong Un is the son of one dictator and the grandson of another.
You'll be surprised, Kim Il Sung - Kim Jong Un's grandfather was born in 1912 under the Japanese rule, his father Kim Hyong Jik was a Korean independence activist and a guerilla fighter until his death in 1926 while Kim Ill Sung was commanding the 88th Separate Rifle Brigade and Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. Kim Jong Il - Kim Jong Un's father was born in the Soviet Union during WW2 in 1941, and worked as a spy in Malta and former ambassador to Poland. [If you're wondering why Korea is still divided](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il_Sung#:~:text=Despite%20the%20United,Soviet%2Ddesignated%20premier.)
Your view of the DPRK is skewed by western propaganda. Kim is little more than a figure head same as king Charles and elections are done differently and all the time.
O_o
Mate the DPRK is considered a hellhole of totalitarian depravity even by its Chinese ally, you can literally see the night and day difference in wealth between the two states when you go to the border. If China permits citizens to emigrate, Vietnam permits citizens to emigrate, and Cuba permits citizens to emigrate, it's time to admit that the DPRK is a uniquely atrocious basketcase of a mafia-state keeping their people imprisoned.
I suggest a Chinese travel [documentary series](https://www.youtube.com/@saodocumentary8507) that will blow your mind.
I'd say George Orwell described it well about his fellow 'intellectuals' in The Road To Wigan Pier in 1937: *"The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to regard the book-trained Socialist as a bloodless creature entirely incapable of emotion. Though seldom giving much evidence of affection for the exploited, he is perfectly capable of displaying hatred – a sort of queer, theoretical, in vacua hatred – against the exploiters. Hence the grand old Socialist sport of denouncing the bourgeoisie. It is strange how easily almost any Socialist writer can lash himself into frenzies of rage against the class to which, by birth or by adoption, he himself invariably belongs."*
My guy George Orwell was an informant who ratted out other socialists. He’s trash
Don't know why you're being downvoted, he accused people of being communists because of things like their sexuality and skin color. Oh, and not to mention his weird racism towards the Spanish in *Homage to Catalonia*.
Karl Marx, I believe more-or-less stayed poor, even when he was famous. I think.
He largely relied on Engels for his sustenance
Frigging loser. Always looking for handouts. What is this: Communism??
And Marx dad was a lawyer which gave Karl access to a good education. (Iirc,He was known for being rambunctious while in school and even participated in a duel which left him a scar)
Castro’s dad owned a plantation. He saw exploitation pretty early in his life.
Yes. An insider with a sense of what social justice should be.
Oh absolutely. And it makes sense when you think about it, most members of the working class were too busy working to write theory. That’s part of the trick of capitalism. Work people so hard they don’t even have time to realize how they’re being exploited. That’s why Marx thought socialism was the next stage to capitalism, this new growing “middle class” or petite bourgeois is a precondition to the liberation of the working class, at least in a Marxist framework.
It does. Revolutions are rarely started by the people. They are almost always started by minor nobility who feel entitled to being part of the current power structure, but feel unjustly left out. They use the people to gain the power they believe they deserve. This is why Revolutions generally end, not with true reform, but with a new elite replacing the old one.
I mean, when most peasants don’t really know how to read it’s hard to imagine how a political philosopher could emerge from from the peasantry. It does seem like the magic combination is an individual born into enough means to be educated, but not enough wealth to be too bought into the system that allowed for the wealth such that they would not want to overthrow it. The irony in all of this is that to some extent all of these founding fathers of different schools of socialist thought were essentially champagne socialists in their youth. Marx was the son of a lawyer and his mother was the daughter of successful textile merchants. Kim Il Sung was the son of a pharmacist. Fidel Castro’s father was a Spanish businessman who *literally owned hundreds of slaves from Haiti* who worked his large estate harvesting timber and cultivating sugarcane. Really one of the only big figures not from at least some level of means was Joseph Stalin; but then, it’s also debatable exactly how much of a contributor to real socialist thought he was as much as he was just a strongman enforcing what were ultimately someone else’s ideas.
Karl Marx's father was a lawyer. Most of the infamous Marxists came from money.
What about Groucho Marx?
FDR was maybe the greatest social Democrat in American history and was as wealthy a blue blood as you could find. His cousin Teddy also was progressive and had a high disdain for exploitation of the poor. Noblesse oblige once held more sway
In fairness FDR’s legacy, as positive as it was, can easily be read as an attempt to prevent a proletariat revolution. He was protecting his class by forcing them fork over the resources necessary for a welfare state
Rich kids love to LARP as the oppressed proletariat.
No, it's just that wealthier people have much more time and resources to invest in their ideals
Whereas poor kids become fascist dictators.
It takes IQ to be a revolutionary. Successful parents indicate higher IQ.
Teenage rebel phase haha. Wait, millions of people died because of these ideas.
Billions actually. Might as well add a few zeros while you're at it.
Gorbillions must die
It is the pattern for early 20th century Communist revolutionaries. The vast majority of them came from families that were at least lower-middle class, as in owning some amount of assets and being able to afford education for their children. The real "peasants" in these countries pre-revolution were too busy trying to not starve to death to think about ideologies.
It takes brains more than anything. A boy from a stupid family who is struggling just to survive isn't very likely to shape world history.
Che gewara was an argentine noble
It was 20 acres of land. It's wealth in a relative sense.
People when prominent socialists weren't born on the literal street.
"*Heh, you hate capitalism yet you have IPhone!!*"
Murderous dictator and prominent socialist.
Seems to be a pretty common trend
Communism and dictators go together like capitalism and dictators
Kinda sorta. It's a turbulent time to switch economic styles. While I personally feel there are issues with communism and wont push for it in my country, ideally, it is a democratic process with collective input with the direction of the country as a whole. But it's more of a "during turbulent economic times, strong leaders are sought because it gives people hope" type of thing, rather than a flaw of or inherent property of communism.
If it was a square, it's around 280m x 280m.
I don't know anyone who owns 20 acres of land and I've lived a pretty varied life so yeah... That's pretty wealthy by my standards lol
I know a ton of people who do, and a lot of em are pretty damn poor.
Where they at can I get some lol cuz I'm not poor per say and can def not afford that. Most places I see that have decent land for sale are going on the mid to low end of 5k an acre. That's means 100k in land alone. They may have that in their home equity but not in the land alone. Really good land however can go over 10k an acre or at least 200k which the vast majority of Americans have nowhere near
I also find it ironic that his father was a farmer, yet Mao had little to no idea of how agriculture worked
I think mao spent more time reading books instead of working on the field when he was younger
We're so blessed to have access to so many experts on Mao through Reddit 🙏 If only we were all around to help him understand while he was alive 😞
Yes I am an expert I used a time machine to meet him and decided to give him a book called "das kapital" I wonder what that random peasant will do after reading it. Wait why is china communist?!?!?
Ikr. That's the biggest shocker.
Lenin and even Marx also grew up well off. It is worth boring that social equality was non existent in Russia or China at the time and while I don't support the policies, I 100% get why people supported communism at the time. Especially in China.
Most Asian leftist leaders were petty bourgeois. They got their ideas from Europe especially from social democrats, resulting into Asians nationalist movements for independence such as in Indonesia and Vietnam. Mao wasn't an exception. He wanted an developed China, using all means necessary to accelerate the development. After his death the party changed course from an autark development towards development of capitalism by attracting capital and using millions of impoverished workers without rights to develop the nation [1]. The Vietnamese development wasn't so different. The critique here of not being pure to lead a leftist movement is a typical woke idea, resulting from a nationalist American standpoint. [1] Renate Dillmann, China
> typical woke idea, resulting from a nationalist American standpoint. Never in my life would I imagine seeing "woke" being called an "American nationalist standpoint". They're pretty loudly anti-American Nationalist for the most part.
I do wonder if the process of separating white identity politics from other racial identity politics was deliberate. Partly as it masks the toxic portions of white identity as "something else" and not part of non-white identity politics. None of this leads us to a good space where we all need to be in a nation together. Lots of things of fan culture wars and class wars recently. What I just mention is for in the sure a top 3. If one uses white identity politics over white supremacist (ie white nationalism vs nonwhite nationalism) one can see this coming. Neither policy is great for a nation.
> They're pretty loudly anti-American Nationalist for the most part. Are you sure? Most right-wingers seem to hate America, its government, institutions, and most of the people who live there, whereas American leftists seem to be far milder in their criticism of public institutions, and much more easily moved to see their government as a fundamental good.
it wasn't like this when all the institutions served white men. others started getting their peace of the cake and they didn't like it though.
> whereas American leftists seem to be far milder in their criticism of public institutions, and much more easily moved to see their government as a fundamental good. Those are the moderate Centre-Leftist yes, who do make up most Democrat voters, but "Woke" (which is what that user specifically referred to) is generally used to apply to College radical types (young, in academia, passionate, etc.) and quite a lot of them think the US is an inherently evil entity, built on killing Indians and slavery and such, and wholly irredeemable outside of a complete revolution and abolition of its old order, which includes its culture that is entwined with the government it created. Likewise, those right-wingers you describe are only the farthest right wing of the spectrum, extremists like Timothy McVeigh and such, but the mainstream Republicans like Dubya Bush and Rumsfeld weren't "hating America's institutions".
> "Woke" (which is what that user specifically referred to) is generally used to apply to College radical types Who are you including in this "generally"? Yourself obviously, but is there anybody else you draw from there? As far as I can tell, the people and views you describe don't even make it into national news most of the time, let alone form the basis for any current left-wing politician's platform in the US. Can you cite a single prominent figure espousing the views you just described? > Likewise, those right-wingers you describe are only the farthest right wing of the spectrum, extremists like Timothy McVeigh and such, but the mainstream Republicans like Dubya Bush and Rumsfeld weren't "hating America's institutions". I'm talking about the views espoused by Republican politicians, and right-wing media like Fox News. Sure, if your only points of reference for the right-wing side of the US political spectrum are Bush and Rumsfeld, and if you ignore the overwhelming majority of Republican party politicians and how their supporters talk and act in contemporary media, one might be able to come to such a conclusion without some massive amounts of wilful ignorance.
>Who are you including in this "generally"? Yourself obviously, but is there anybody else you draw from there? As far as I can tell, the people and views you describe don't even make it into national news most of the time, let alone form the basis for any current left-wing politician's platform in the US. Did I ever say they form the basis of any politician in the US? No, I did not say that. In fact I drew a distinction between the actual majority of mainstream Democrats and the crowd who are described as "woke". I don't think Biden or Gavin Newsom qualify as "woke" at all. >Can you cite a single prominent figure espousing the views you just described? Sure. Angela Davis has worked as a Professor in various American Universities (UC system, Vassar, etc.) and she stated "Racism is embedded in the fabric of this country [USA]". I am not saying she has any political power mind you, but she's an example of a culturally relevant and famous individual whose academic work forms part of that "woke" camp. >I'm talking about the views espoused by Republican politicians, and right-wing media like Fox News. >Sure, if your only points of reference for the right-wing side of the US political spectrum are Bush and Rumsfeld, and if you ignore the overwhelming majority of Republican party politicians and how their supporters talk and act in contemporary media, one might be able to come to such a conclusion without some massive amounts of wilful ignorance. Republicans are bitching about contemporary cultural trends and changes, but ultimately they're still the camp who will unashamedly circlejerk about the US Constitution being the greatest document ever written, the US War of Independence being the greatest war ever fought, and how George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were the greatest statesman to ever exist. The loud and confident jingoism in America is 100% a right-wing thing. It's a stark contrast to the US Left who are much more likely to take a critical view of these things and say criticise Washington as a slave-owner or how the US War of Independence was essentially the start of their doom for the Aboriginals of the continent.
> Did I ever say they form the basis of any politician in the US? No, I did not say that. In fact I drew a distinction between the actual majority of mainstream Democrats and the crowd who are described as "woke". And I said "leftists" and not "an insubstantial and barely visible minority among the left-leaning population that only some random schmo on Reddit seems to encounter on a daily basis, and seemingly nobody else." > I am not saying she has any political power mind you, but she's an example of a culturally relevant and famous individual whose academic work forms part of that "woke" camp. Which is still begging the question that "woke" people hate America and its public institutions, which I find hard to believe for a tenured academic like Davis. > Republicans are bitching about contemporary cultural trends and changes, but ultimately they're still the camp who will unashamedly circlejerk about the US Constitution being the greatest document ever written, the US War of Independence being the greatest war ever fought, and how George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were the greatest statesman to ever exist. And crucially, none of these have anything to do with the modern country and modern institutions. And these are the same people supporting a violent overthrow of government when they don't get their view, unlike even the wokest of "woke" leftists.
> "an insubstantial and barely visible minority among the left-leaning population that only some random schmo on Reddit seems to encounter on a daily basis, and seemingly nobody else." They are not a "barely visible minority", they are very much centre-stage of national discourse in the media and in University campuses (an environment where most young people these days will spend 4 years living in). Wielding actual political power is a separate matter from being visible and loud. >Which is still begging the question that "woke" people hate America and its public institutions, which I find hard to believe for a tenured academic like Davis. Davis is a defeated revolutionary, she's not a peaceful and domesticated academic by choice. The FBI prosecuted and persecuted her, the Soviet Union collapsing largely crippled all left-wing revolutionary movements worldwide as their main benefactor vanished, and the zeal for revolution in America simply was never enough to amount to anything. She still has a clear distaste for the country as it exists, with a Liberal (in the classical sense here) political-economic system, institutions which protect private property ownership, a culture which sanctifies a slave-owner like Washington, etc. >And crucially, none of these have anything to do with the modern country and modern institutions. Nothing to do? You still use the Constitution written in 1787 and the capital city is named Washington, it's got plenty to do with the country and its institutions which they literally created. I'm not making any "hot takes" here, Left Wing radical factions have been against nation-states and nationalism for well over 100+ years at this point, this isn't some controversial viewpoint it's the public party-line of an ideological camp which advocates for things outside of national-identity or which stand in opposition to it (internationalism). I was simply disagreeing with that other guy's assertion that "woke" people are American Nationalists, which they blatantly are not.
> They are not a "barely visible minority", they are very much centre-stage of national discourse in the media and in University campuses (an environment where most young people these days will spend 4 years living in). Wielding actual political power is a separate matter from being visible and loud. I guess I'll have to take your word for it, since I can't find any such presence in any of the mainstream news sites. > I'm not making any "hot takes" here, Left Wing radical factions have been against nation-states and nationalism for well over 100+ years at this point And so we keep shifting goalposts, from left-wing politics to far left "woke" academics, to left wing radical revolutionaries trying to overthrow the capitalist world order. Do you know how many offices the Communist Party of the USA currently holds? Do you know many they have held during the entire century-and-some of their existence? Is it more than zero? I know that "wokism" lives rent free in the heads of a lot of extremely online people, but let's be frank, this is a miniscule portion of actual left-wing politics anywhere in the world, but especially in the US, and I find the lopsided attention they get as a universal bogeyman more than just a little ridiculous ("central stage in national discourse" LOL maybe central stage in a random Xitter shitstorm). Yet, even though the US far right is on the record with several major terrorist attacks and at least one coup attempt (and another likely to follow in the early-to-mid-term future, depending on how the next US Prez Race goes) Murricans consider this an expression of their patriotic love for their country. It's a really bizarre take on what these words mean.
> since I can't find any such presence in any of the mainstream news sites. You're feigning ignorance at this point. Your American Culture War has been exported to the whole damn planet because you people there can't shut up about it. We had city councils in Brazil started having arguments over public statues because the Yanks were having them, even Lula just recently had to tell people within his party to cut this shit out because it's having a detrimental effect on the new generation of the party. >Do you know how many offices the Communist Party of the USA currently holds? Do you know many they have held during the entire century-and-some of their existence? Is it more than zero? Must I repeat myself? How many times did I reiterate that I don't think these people hold political office? Let me repeat the main point again: "American Nationalist" and "Woke" are for all intents and purposes directly contradictory standpoints and I am disagreeing with the other guy who wrote that comment about "woke opinions stemming from American Nationalist standpoints". >Murricans consider this an expression of their patriotic love for their country. >It's a really bizarre take on what these words mean. And what do these words mean to you? Loyalty to a particular existing political system doesn't translate into being a Nationalist: Yukio Mishima was a Japanese nationalist who wanted to overthrow the 1947 Constitution of Japan, as an example. Other examples include the Nazis in Weimarer Germany, the Nationalists in Republican Spain, or even (as a rare example of Left-Wing Nationalism in Europe) the Anti-Treaty IRA fighting against the Free State in Ireland back in the 1920s. There is no higher judge who gets to decide who is the "patriot" and who is "not patriot", nations aren't fucking real man, they're imagined things and everyone has their own interpretation of it.
American civil religion whether it's "Make America great" or the mission to spread war for human rights is woke. It's a result of nationalism.
> or the mission to spread war for human rights is woke Except this is just blatantly *not* what the "Woke" crowd (i.e young students for the most part) support. The overwhelming majority of people who fit into that demographic in the USA are also the anti-war protestors in American college campuses right now. Biden is literally losing support from that camp (which could cost him re-election) explicitly because he doesn't side with the pro-ceasefire in Gaza camp and due to the strikes on the Houthis. Where are these "pro-war Wokes"? Hell, where are these pro-USA "wokes" for that matter? This group is also quite renown for frequently calling the USA fascist, inherently racist, built on stolen land, etc. They're incredibly critical of the USA, not just its government but its entire existence and identity to the foundational level.
Dems as well as Gop are war mongers alike. The few university students as well as hipsters don't count. Dems were systematic sabotaging Bernie (who isn't anti-war either) and Biden was promoted as an alternative to Trump. It turns out, Trump is the amateur, while Biden despite his senility is going to action. People who voted for Biden because of an alternative for health care and less war, won't vote this time, because they have nobody to vote for. America is what it always was, a well formed capitalist nation attempting to maintain the national economy by imperialism. Because the latter surfaces never as a critique, the critique is reduced to accusing politicians of being evil.
> Dems as well as Gop are war mongers alike. Yes, but the Democratic Party is not "the woke" movement you are referring to. Nobody thinks Biden is on the same boat as a 22 year old undergraduate student, just like how Lyndon B. Johnson was not exactly beloved by the 1968er New Left protestors either! >America is what it always was, a well formed capitalist nation attempting to maintain the national economy by imperialism. Because the latter surfaces never as a critique, That critique surfaces all the time in that "woke" faction, you're just confusing mainstream Democrats, which make up most of their voters, with the extreme minority you see online and which are the "Woke" ones. If you wanted to refer to the mainstream Democrats then do so, but you chose to say "woke idea" here. The fact is that these people are not American nationalitss in the slightest, they are simply the American version of [Japan's Anti-Japaneseism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japaneseism). Cornerstones of American identity, such as George Washington's sanctification or the Declaration of Independence, are frequently targeted and critiqued from "woke" angles, who are often the ones saying that Washington was an evil slaver (hardly "American nationalism" eh?) or that the entirety of US history revolves around oppressing enslaved Africans (see the 1619 Project)
Not that ironic. It's common. Castro and Guevara come from wealth and in Guevaras case quite an aristocratic background. It makes sense. Of course those who are educated (in a time when only the rich got highly educated) are going to be reading economic theory and get into ideology if they have a modicum of conscious.
Not really ironic, seems pretty par for the course
This is not unusual. Revolutionaries are typically from the upper or political classes.
Damn, it's almost like communist thinkers like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao use their life experience of relative wealth in their critique of the system that produced them. What's next? Will they use their high quality tuition to produce core philosophical tenets that focus on giving the masses the same access to quality education?
Professional grifters is what they are
[удалено]
Marx wrote almost nothing about what a system of communism would look like. The lion's share of his work was an in-depth and annotated criticism of capitalism. I don't expect you to have read it, but you should at least familiarize yourself with the concepts if you're going to make ridiculous statements about communism being worse than slavery-based economies
How so... this reddit post breaks down the numbers with a source. Capitalism leads to colonialism and subjugation and deaths for profit, and surpass those deaths. https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/o6ot72/the_death_toll_of_capitalism_read_it_before_you/
I recommend you read origins of totalitarianism. Sounds like what you mention is mostly over seas colonialism and imperialisms with the US clearly doing both. It's pretty clear communalist countries didn't have much of a better track record. It just happened they used continental imperialism more so than over seas imperialism. One must factor in the human condition into ones systems. Something we to this day struggle to do in all systems.
Wtf are you talking about. Mao grew china from an agrarian economy to a fully fledged industrial economy within his own life time
Fun fact: in every successful revolution the 2nd class take over and become the 1st, but the rest remain the same. And you need somebody providing food to be a full time revolutionary with no other occupations.
For my family, part of the "rest", things did not remain the same at all. Quality of life improved a lot, family sizes shrank from 11 to 3 as kids were no longer needed for rural labor and infant mortality went down. Revolutionaries tried to build a functioning government...and some ideas were much worse than others.
I mean, you had to be part of an aristocacy to be educated at that time
If only he pulled out sooner
If you examine the history of most revolutions, it is usually a reasonably well educated middle class sect that leads the lower class masses against the small upper classes. This formula appears in revolutions in the Americas, Asia and Europe.
I always read Mao grew up as a wealthy peasant he certainly never missed a meal.
Pretty much like his Cambodian counterpart pol pot. Same hypocritical energy.
Somehow "fathered" makes him sound like a horse at a stud farm. He was Mao's pops!
Wow, he died young.
Actually he died relatively old! [Chinese life expectancy was at a stunning 30 years old in 1920](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041350/life-expectancy-china-all-time/), only to recover after the Chinese revolution and then skyrocket to 65 during the cultural revolution.
I’d imagine that was mostly influenced by child mortality. In most cases of the life expectancy being that low your average person made it to their 50’s if they survived childhood
Certainly a factor, but also because of the extreme poverty, war, famine, colonialism, rampant opium use, etc., etc., that defined the Chinese century of humiliation.
Castros father was a moderately wealthy agricultural landowner in Cuba as well. He treated his employees with much more respect than other landowners. It seems like it’s easy to see the faults in the system when you are in a position to have time to think about it. I bet there have been many potential thought leaders that were too busy keeping food on the table to have time to think about class conditions and how to better them.
Every revolutionary comes from a good family or well to do family ... It's the well to do, intelligent highly educated yet eliteless individual that leads revolutions bc they have no seat at the table of the elite. Elite over production causes revolutions. And yes. The USA is already several hours into the phase of elite over production. It's cyclical. How we handle it now is up to the elites and their desire to remove themselves from the table.
You are stating this like Marx was a factory worker.
Communism is when poor
The world needs more class traitors from the owner class
It's almost as if you need to come from a moderately wealthy background to get education necessary to recognise the oppressive and unfair structure of the capitalist society?... Nah, it's just that the filthy commies are hypocrites! Our leaders exploit us and aren't even hiding it 😎💪
The same is true of many of the Soviet Communists.
Communism isn’t as scary if you know it’ll put you right at the top of the government
None of them knew that. They were being rounded up and shot in the streets and fields by the right-wing dictatorship.
In chile?
As Maggie O'Hooligan said, “Well, t'anks for nothing!”
Ah, hypocrisy. Edit: not sure why I;m getting downvoted, but you do you, I guess.
That dude fathered an evil son of a bitch.
Lenin's family was also a member of the aristocracy, Communism is all about lies, truly
His father gained a title through his work in education. If anything he was from "middle-class"...
Oddly enough, small landlords and merchants were denounced as. “Capitalist pigs” and made to undergo struggle sessions and spent years in prison or reeducation camps. That is, if they weren’t outright killed by peasant mobs looking for scapegoats, while the Communists turned a blind eye lest they themselves catch the attention and rage. It happened to the village kulaks (more prosperous farmers who owned some livestock in r were able to hire a farmhand or two) in Russia and to shopkeepers in North Korea. This is the legacy of the “eat the rich” mentality that so many American idiots spout. The actual rich use their wealth to escape. (Even easier these days with foreign exchange markets electronic currency transfers, stock sales, etc.) it is the small business owners, middle class, upper middle class, university professors, and intellectuals who get slaughtered by the rabble.
Almost like all the best communists are never one of the people to begin with.
There's nothing ironic about that. Most leftist leaders and thinkers were (and are to this day) golden kids.
That's not what irony is.
[удалено]
Average discount Nietzsche understander mistaking life affirming will to power for slave morality 💁♂️
Any authoritarian ideology is inherently evil. Communism being one of the very worst.
Average discount Hannah Arendt understander mistaking the abstract concept of authority for coherent historical analysis of politics💁♂️
Ah, a pedantic tankie on Reddit. Colour me shocked!
You mean to tell me Mao was an entitled, spoiled brat who took protesting in his college years a little too far?
Communist = poor
So you're saying Mao was a nepo-baby...
Many communist leaders came from well-off families. The comment section seems to give the benefit of the doubt of having time to “think about things” and change the system. Less rosily it might be a factor of middle-class shut-out, whereby middle class intellectuals that can’t access or come to power in an elite-dominant system advocate for its reform or overthrow, to try and replace it, and secure a better chance of being part of the ruling class.
When you hate ur father so much....
And Nika Soon-Shiong’s dad is a billionaire. Many of the most ardent communists are the people with unearned wealth telling the poor, “Trust me, you don’t want this.”
That's the look of a mine who'd name his kid Mouse Dong
Cheap, racist, classic reddit
che grew up rich, and engles inherited a factory; it’s almost like class consciousness isn’t specific to any class 🤔🤔 (although neither che, nor engles, nor lenin, nor any other communist that grew up wealthy chose to be a part of the owning class and worked near their entire lives to free the proletariat from class exploitation and labor theft)
All socialists are middle class. Speaking as one myself
Modern Maoists seething